Prose

First Generation American

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by Elaine Greene Weisburg

My sister and I are attracted to movies starring Clive Owen–more than those of any other actor.  A year or two ago, I took a good look at him and realized that he resembles our father, Harry Greene, when we were young—especially around the eyes.  “Sigmund Freud did a good morning’s work when he invented the Oedipus Complex,” my psychoanalyst said, early in our acquaintance many years ago. But without an Oedipal connection, a precocious friend of mine had a crush on him when she was twelve, and when he was sixty, a fashion-editor friend said my father looked like Hubert de Givenchy, the elegant French couturier.

As adults, my sister and I admitted that each of us felt she was our parents’ favorite child. Yet for half a decade ending with adolescence, I was definitely the Daddy’s Girl, perhaps because I was older. Every Friday I got to stay up late with him, listening to the comedians Fred Allen and Phil Baker on the radio. And when we were snowed in during a blizzard one winter, Daddy and I were the ones to trudge to the grocery four blocks away, with laundry bags slung over our shoulders for all the food we would carry back home. In those pre-snowsuit, pre-blue jean days, I wore two pairs of flannel pajama pants tucked into my galoshes. This was such key scene in my young life that I could draw you a picture of it—from the rear, two figures disappearing into a cloud of snow.

I also got to go on a beach walk with my father many Sunday mornings when we were living in Rockaway. That’s where I developed my long stride because he didn’t slow down just to accommodate a child and I wasn’t going to show any weakness. That’s where Harriet Z. would sometimes show up on her own Sunday walk. She was a Long Island Rail Road commuter who rode the same weekday train to and from the city as my father. A tall, stylish single working woman my parents’ age, she patronized and annoyed me, but I didn’t think until decades later that perhaps my presence helped to make a not-so-chancy meeting look innocent.

Not many years later, after we entered the Second World War, my father used to walk the beach at night as a Civil Defense volunteer. This was not make-work: along this same beach in 1942, close to Montauk, several German submariners came ashore, were captured heading west on the Long Island Railroad, tried and executed.

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

My father was the third and last child in his Ukrainian-American family and the only one born in the United States. His Manhattan birthplace was an apartment at 184 Rivington Street; the date was May 14, 1895. There is a schoolyard now where the building stood, but random parts of the street remain the same. His birth certificate contains four errors: the date of birth, the newborn’s first name, the father’s first name, and the mother’s maiden name. Is this evidence of an indifference to immigrants?  Problems with foreign accents? His passport said “Henry known as Harry,” we celebrated the real birthday, and for over three quarters of the 20th century, he lived a good American life.

Harry graduated from Boys High School in Brooklyn and went to St. Lawrence University in Canton near New York’s Canadian border. His studies in the forestry department of the agricultural school were probably tuition free, and he earned his room and board as a clerk in a hotel near the campus. I have his photo album which covers many decades and in it a large sepia print shows the St. Lawrence football team including Harry Greene, a man of average size, playing left end. He also did a lot of bicycling, played tennis, and into late middle age played four-wall handball. He probably would have liked to have an athletic son in addition to his two daughters whose only form of exercise was the Lindy Hop. My father was a big reader, especially of serious biographies, and was an invaluable help with my math homework.

The college hotel job included summers, so for four years Harry didn’t see his family in New York. This was evidently not a sacrifice. His troubled father, a depressive by nature, did not find the streets of New York to be paved with gold as some immigrants did, and his mother was a generally acknowledged shrew. After graduation, my father found a job with a research laboratory where they investigated infectious diseases. His mother, fearful for his health, forbade him to take it. He actually obeyed her, and joined the Army (perhaps drafted) after the United States entered the First World War, serving in the Quartermaster Corps managing supplies. He remained in or near New York throughout the war and probably enjoyed being seen in his Teddy Roosevelt-style broad brimmed hat and puttees.

Upon marrying, my father he joined his new father-in-law in the floor covering business just as his two future brothers-in-law eventually did. His opinion of this practice was made clear in the rule established as soon as he, also the father of daughters, started his own company:  “No sons-in-law.”

When the Depression arrived, the family business had already been sold, the million dollars paid to my grandfather by the purchaser, the Armstrong Cork Company, was greatly diminished by the bursting of the Florida real estate bubble. My father was supporting us by various endeavors. The most exotic to me was his part-ownership of the Ocean-Edge Baths—lockers and showers for day-tripping beach-goers a few miles from our Neponsit house. But for the repeal of Prohibition, my father might have become involved in bootlegging. The well-known gangster Big Bill Dwyer was trying to arrange to smuggle some of his illegal booze into the country in small boats that would land on my father’s piece of beach. Would he have given permission? I think he was too sensible to have broken the law.

His business career was spent in the importation of linoleum from Europe which frequently required his presence at the factories. There was a lot of trans-Atlantic shipping in the 1930s so ocean liners went back and forth even with passenger lists in the single digits. My sister and I loved going to see him off. I’ll always remember the white-and-gilt piano on the Normandie and the grandeur of the Rex.

One winter, his ship returned three days late and covered with ice. My mother told me in an uncharacteristic confidence that Harriet Z. had phoned to ask when Harry was coming back. My mother said to me, “I hung up on her.” To me, on later reflection, Harriet’s phone call proves that although there may have been a flirtatious friendship, there was no affair: no guilty “other woman” would have dared to phone a wife.

After my father died, my mother recalled that in 1934 he spent more time at sea than on land. I wonder now why he didn’t move us overseas with him so we could all stay together. Maybe he didn’t think of it. Maybe my mother refused. That we girls never asked to go along for the ride just once is something else to think about. My children certainly would have asked, and my grandchildren would have insisted. My theory: we were powerless and we knew it. Our household was not a democracy. An example: When I was in eighth grade and all my Jewish classmates were going to be confirmed at the synagogue, I asked to join them. My father said no, he hated that rabbi. I didn’t argue and never asked again, although I was seriously discomforted socially and disappointed personally.

*         *         *         *

Harry sometimes talked about his deprived childhood. He only had one toy—a small painted metal car with wheels that turned. He would push the little car back and forth on the floor and that served as fun and games for the baby of the family. His sister became a beautiful woman who taught school, the pride and joy of her father. His elder brother became a lawyer, insurance broker, and perennial losing candidate for a judgeship on the Republican ticket. This son was the pride and joy of his mother and was referred to as Sonny Boy by my resentful father. I think my poor Daddy was entitled to his self pity, and to his lifelong touchiness too, I suppose, although the latter was sometimes a burden to me.

When I made a political and aesthetic leap away from my parents as a Queens College student, I was living at home—a bad place for leaping away. (College dorms do a lot to preserve family peace.) Although my mother ignored such details, my father found it hard to accept the huge poster I hung on my bedroom wall: Picasso’s Woman in the Mirror with those bulbous protuberances and weird extra noses. Another offense was the harsh-sounding Hindemith record often playing on my phonograph. To him I had become an alien and he took it as a personal insult. My moving to the left of his New Deal politics and insisting on arguing about it was even worse: I was a combative alien. My sister remembers me once charging up the stairs with our father charging after me although I have no such memory.

Yet my last years at home were peaceful and warm while I worked at a market research job my father helped me find and was being courted by someone he respected and liked. Years later, on his retirement, he and my mother moved to my apartment complex. She worked in her best friend’s art gallery and he walked his daily mile or two and shopped for their dinners. He was walking to or from the Second Avenue Deli the Friday he suffered a fatal heart attack. It was a month before his 84th birthday. I know just where he fell because the police told us the principal of a junior high school saw the collapse through his office window on First Avenue, just north of 11th Street. I pass the school a few times a year but I always cross the street to avoid stepping on that haunted pavement, even after more than thirty years.

Harry Greene died about a mile from where he was born. There is something oddly satisfying about that.

 

Elaine Greene Weisburg for some fifty years was a writer and editor at Seventeen, Esquire, House & Garden and House Beautiful and free-lanced widely for the New York Times and other magazines. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyday Magic: A Memoir

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by Charles Troob

In the early 1970s, when preparing to teach in elementary school, I was introduced to the work of Jean Piaget.  His essays deal with how children develop a cognitive understanding of the world.  For example, Piaget observed that a small child couldn’t see—even after repeated demonstrations– that a tall thin beaker and a short fat one may hold the same amount of water.  A few years later the child gets this concept quite easily.   Piaget theorized that children go through cognitive stages, and he speculated that this is partly due to biological constraints—a six-year-old brain has wiring that is more complex than the wiring of a four-year-old, and can support more elaborate thinking.

I was skeptical about that brain wiring stuff. Based on my own experience, it was no surprise that children take years to see the world as adults do.  Much of what grownups think of as common sense is miraculous to a child.

I taught myself to read when I was three.  By the time I was five I chatted with adults in grown-up language.   But daily life continually astounded and perplexed me.   Light bulbs went on when you hit a switch. The refrigerator made cold air.  Birds and airplanes stayed aloft.  A needle in a phonograph record sent music to a speaker, and a radio played sounds that traveled through the air.  None of this made sense, though it seemed to be true. I read a story in which a bean became a mile-high beanstalk.  Was this a fantasy or was it possible?  It did seem improbable—but really, no more unlikely than that a seed in my grandmother’s garden turned into a radish or a zinnia.

So if Piaget’s children—he first observed his own kids– failed to understand that water can assume many shapes, I wouldn’t rush to conclude that they had immature brains or logic.    Maybe this property of liquids is just an example of everyday magic that a child must see many, many times to accept as true.

Here are two memories of how I struggled to distinguish the possible from the impossible, the true from the false.

In many stories someone is brought to a new place by entering a door—or going down a rabbit hole.  In the game of Clue, two secret passages let you cross the board in a single move.   Did such things exist in the real world?  I wasn’t sure.  Near our apartment a highway tunneled under Queens Boulevard.   In the tunnel a sign on a door said “passage to Union Turnpike.”   I used to wonder what would happen when you went through that door.  You were transported to Union Turnpike, but how?  Only years later did I realize there was a staircase to the roadway above.

I was amazed to find out that four times three equals three times four–and that this is not just a coincidence but a rule: seven times five equals five times seven, and so on.   I’d put out four rows of three pennies.  Then I’d shift them into three columns of four pennies.  Then I’d shift them again.   As four threes become three fours before my eyes, I sort of got it, but I didn’t really believe it.  I did this over and over, just to confirm that the world hadn’t changed and this mysterious fact was still true.

I suspect that most children don’t much worry about stuff like this, but to me it was very important to learn about the “real” world in which adults lived.  I was weak and awkward.   Other kids might push their way through life with force and bluster—I would depend on knowledge, not my useless body and timid spirit.

From this point of view mathematics was particularly satisfying and promising.  Even a small child can see that grownups depend on numbers.   Money is exchanged, food is weighed, cars have speedometers and odometers.   Best of all, arithmetic gives you definitive answers you can count on.  I was thrilled to learn the rules for “carrying” in addition, “borrowing” in subtraction, and that marvelous complicated engine called long division.  When I got to plane geometry in tenth grade I was dazzled by the strange theorems and even more by Euclid’s system for proving them.

Though I soaked up book learning and schoolwork like a sponge, one thing troubled me greatly.   How would I put all this knowledge to use?  What other kinds of skills were required to be effective in the real world, and how did you acquire them?  I often asked older people this question.  The only answer I ever got was, “Experience.”   This was obviously true, but no answer at all.

*****

Throughout my adult life I have remained fascinated by the relationship between thinking and doing, knowledge and action, theory and practice.   And my need to learn about things in advance—to have a map of the terrain before venturing out—evolved into a talent for making sense of data, for diagnosing problems, for streamlining work processes and creating new systems.  For any job that could be described as “analyst” or “planner” or “evaluator” I was a natural.

As for the other parts of making things happen—I was not a natural at all.     Only with many years of “experience”–and training—did I begin to learn to supervise, negotiate, make tough decisions, and deal with crises.

But I did learn all these to some extent.  By the time I retired I was somewhat less perplexed and amazed by life in the real world than I had been as a little boy.

 

Charles Troob wrote this for an IRP study group in Guided Autobiography.  Many thanks to David Grogan, the coordinator, and to the other participants, who gave so much of themselves in this remarkable journey.

Diamond Earrings

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by Carmen Mason

“Hello, Rachel? “

“Yes? Oh, hi Mrs. McConnell…oh I know, it’s about the saucer… you saw my note I hope…”

“Yes, that’s no problem Rachel, it was a silly old plate …”

“Oh no, it was so pretty and…”

“Rachel, I’m calling about something completely different…”

“I’ll surely find a matching one this weekend. My sister lives right near one of those great ‘seconds’ places that has every dish and glass pattern…”

“IT’S NOT ABOUT THE SAUCER, RACHEL!”

Desiree quickly lowered her voice. “Please forgive me for that. It’s just that I really think I’m getting the big A. Terry calls it ‘Oldtimers,’ and I think it’s happening to me. I’m more and more forgetful these days. Anyway, do you recall I had these earrings, half moons of gold and diamonds, and I usually put them with my gold chain in the Chinese box – are you still there, Rachel?”

“Yes, yes, I’m listening. I remember, sure I remember.”

“Well, last night I came home and was rushing out again with Terry to one of those auto convention dinners and I couldn’t find them.”

“You mean the Chinese box in your bedroom or the big one in the dining room with all the silver napkin rings?”

“No, the bedroom one where I always keep them. So anyway, I wondered if you could just remember I’m calling about them now so when you come next week you’ll look around and see if maybe I put them somewhere crazy. I swear I think I’m losing it. Today I left the car running after I locked it and went into Costco’s for over an hour! Luckily I keep that spare key in my wallet. You know how I’ve told you to do the same thing?”

“Yes, Mrs. O’Connell. Well, I didn’t see them yesterday any place at all, and I really did a heavy duty ‘cause I realized I missed a couple of carpets in the guest room the week before! And I felt so bad about breaking that saucer…”

“Rachel, let’s concentrate on the earrings. Maybe you found them and put them somewhere I’m not used to putting them – just for safe-keeping?”

“Me? Without telling you in the note along with the saucer?”

“Perhaps you just forgot, Rachel? Oh Rachel, they’re my most precious earrings. I love them. I’d be crazy without them. I really wish you’d think about it and look extra-carefully next Thursday…”

“But how could I forget such a thing? I mean, gold and diamond earrings?”

“I know, I know, but they mean so much to me, Rachel. Terry gave them to me on our twentieth.”

“That’s not the point I’m making, Mrs.O’Connell.  The point I’m making is that that’s not something someone so easily forgets.”

“But if you did – just look Rachel, okay? Is that too much to ask?”

“Did you look in all your pockets? When did you last wear them? Did you take them with you to the Caribbean last month?”

“I never travel with them. Terry puts them in the safe when we go away.”

“So maybe that’s exactly where they are then.”

“It’s the first place I had him look, Rachel!”

“What about that big plush purple robe, Mrs. O’Connell? Heaven knows you love that robe!”

“RACHEL WILSON, ARE YOU HEARING ME? I LOOKED EVERYWHERE IN THIS GOD-DAMNED HOUSE! THEY’RE GONE!” Silence. Then in a calmer voice she continued.

“Please Rachel, I’m being nice, I’m being straight with you. I’m giving you a chance to…”

“A chance? To what, Mrs. O’Connell? You’re giving me a chance to what?”

“TO TELL ME WHERE MY DIAMOND EARRINGS ARE OR TO JUST PUT THEM BACK WHEN YOU GET HERE NEXT WEEK!” Then came the long pause that can never erase the harmful blow, the words, the letter stamped and sent. “Oh God Rachel, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Please, please for…”

“It’s okay, Mrs.”

“Oh please, please, please, this wasn’t my plan. I was just going to…”

“Give me the chance to return them back and make it all right, Mrs.?”

“Yes, no… yes! I just wanted things to be okay again with no more questions asked. I…”

“I understand. I understand. Now you just go back and check every nook and cranny in that house of yours, bend down and check under all the furniture and through every drawer and box and between every book and don’t forget the basement and check the laundry basket although I know it’s empty but you never know, and then I want you to comb through all the sheets and towels and all your drawers and if you don’t mind awfully, ma’am, could you put things back just the way I arranged them, neat and tidy, and if you should find those glittering earrings in all their splendor, please don’t call me to let me know. I want this to be the one big mystery in this life of mine I’ll never have to learn the answer to or have to solve.

“Do you get me, do you hear me, Mrs.? And when I send you that sorry saucer which I do believe you don’t give a hang about, please, please, no simpering phone calls, thank you card, , no pleas from your sorry neck of the woods. Okay Mrs.? You got it? Good!  Now, you just go and have a nice day. Oh, wait, just one more thing – you know yesterday I forgot my pay underneath the Chinese box in your bedroom, but then I remembered it just as I got to the bus stop and funny, I went back through all that rain to get it, something I’d never do ‘cause it’s always going to be there with the next week’s cleaning.

“Isn’t life funny, Mrs.? Doesn’t life have its twists and turns? Now, now, you just stop all that sniffling and gushing, you hear me? Bye bye now. You’ll be just fine. Trust me.”

 

I have been writing prose and poetry all my life. They are sighs of joy, cries for help, testaments of love or loss, refuge and epiphany. They surprise, console and astound me. Just like friends and strangers do.

 

Daddy Stories

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by Phyllis Kriegel 

The only funnies allowed in our house came tucked into the New York Herald Tribune–a respectable Republican newspaper, considered boring by seven-year-old me. My father refused to give a nickel to a Hearst publication or any newspaper considered “yellow journalism.” Neighbors took pity and supplied me with their castoff comics: Dick Tracy, the Katzenjammer Kids, and Lil’Abner—delectable, forbidden fruit.

But Daddy offered other treats, “Let’s go to the bakery and you can choose dessert.” So we’d walk down Main Street hand in hand. Like a Jewish Socrates, he would solicit my opinion, answer my questions with due deference, and turn our stroll into a privileged moment.

After dinner, ending with my chosen gooey dessert, came Toscanini time– when the Philharmonic ‘s music poured out of our mahogany Magnavox.

Sometimes Daddy would dance around the living room to Tchaikovsky or Brahms. My world turned joyous. He was so graceful, so handsome, as light on his feet as Fred Astaire. After whirling and twirling, he’d make a daring leap to our coffee table for finale.

One memorable Sunday he landed instead on Momma’s lap.  I clapped and begged for more. I wonder, did he feel like a bird soaring over New Jersey? Or was he remembering bearded men dancing in Vilna?

#

My father, never a big drinker, loved his shot of Haig and Haig Pinch before dinner. Drink in hand, he’d settle into an over-stuffed armchair, available to hear my pesky plaints–the small compass of a child’s world deserved serious consideration.  What I deemed as monstrous slights, he reduced to small potatoes. With a smile or gentle joke, came advice:

“You might tease someone about their good points but not about weak ones,” he said, after I had mocked a neighborhood kid for some flimsy fault.

Eventually our schmooze time diminished. Girl friends became intimate confidants. Boys and Saturday night dates loomed large. My heart no longer belonged just to Daddy.

Before going off for my freshman year at college, we talked of the new life ahead. An offhand, “Sweetheart, if you’re going to drink, stick to Scotch.” he said. “And be a good girl.”

Did Scotch have some gnomic property to keep me safe? Was he aware of my teen escapades: sipping a Cuba Libre on the terrace of the Claremont Inn; slipping into New York state with its lower drinking age to order a rye and ginger; partying in backyards and swilling purple passion punch–guaranteed to make you sick. Forget the taste, you wanted the euphoria.

The subtext was sex: frantic necking, slow dancing in the dark, grappling in the back seat—all those delicious, dangerous games.

I wonder, did Daddy think that Scotch warded off randy feelings. No matter. My father was paying attention– the rarest and purest form of generosity–some say the greatest act of love. With my children and grandchildren I try to pay attention, as if Daddy were whispering in my ear.

 

I have a passion for narrative. I see telling stories as a survival strategy—a way of being in the world.

 

 

 

 

A Birthday Celebration, 1963

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by Phyllis Kriegel

Call her a lousy mother but the thought of throwing a party for a gaggle of rowdy kids triggered high anxiety—“more Valium,” she muttered.  She balked at shriveled hot dogs, melting ice cream cakes and the obligatory goody bag. Fed up with over-themed birthday parties she said hooey to dejected clowns, gave thumbs down to the tricks of tired magicians.

But how to celebrate her son’s eighth birthday with joy on all sides and no bruised feelings? She offered David a catalogue of alternative treats: a romp at Palisade Amusement Park, a trip to Coney Island with a ride on the cyclone, trekking up Bear Mountain -–suggestions that received a cool “No thanks, Mom.”

Things warmed up when she invited his friend Bob to join the birthday jaunt: let the kids decide, after all, they were no slouches about current goings on. The boys decided a movie in NYC fit the bill. They chose Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which had just opened in a Manhattan movie palace. The three- hour plus movie was billed as a symphony of slapstick, crammed with comedians and craziness– tailor-made for two smart alecks in training.

Last hurdle:  Where for dinner?  The kids craved a Horn and Hardart Automat, but Mom, knowing she’d need a Martini said, “How about going to a little place where the waiters dress like French sailors and they have ship models of the Normandie? “ The prospect of steak and fries—aka Steak Frites–animated the hungry pair. Three napoleons with candles morphed into an impromptu birthday cake; Happy Birthday sung with French accents put the cherry on top.

Reluctant to call it a day, the boys gave a rousing yes to her suggestion of a ride on the Staten Island Ferry.

Waiting for the ferry to dock, she had a Proustian moment. It was a memory out of the pages of the Bobbsey Twins, a beloved series from childhood. Hadn’t Flossie and Freddy- the younger set -gone to the wheelhouse and met the captain? “Why not us,” she thought, and asked an attendant swabbing the deck, “if this birthday boy might see the wheelhouse? “ A mumbled okay and the trio climbed up to be greeted by Captain Andy– grey beard and ruddy cheeks, looking like he’d come from the frontispiece in a children’s book.

In the wheelhouse a vast expanse of windows framed the skyline of skyscrapers and bridges of lower Manhattan. Dazzled by the gleaming brass and burnished wood of the setting, they watched the twinkling lights as night began to fall on the city.

“Would you like to pilot us across New York harbor, birthday boy?” asked Captain Andy.  David scrambled into the captain’s chair and grabbed the mahogany wheel. “You sound the horn when I signal,” the Captain said to Bob.  And sure enough, with David at the helm, the ferry sailed decisively past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, docking safely at Staten Island.

With big grins and firm handshakes, farewell was said to the wheelhouse and to Captain Andy. Then David turned, grabbed Bob and said, “I’m really glad you’re here, ‘cause no one would believe this story! “

 

I have a passion for narrative. I see telling stories as a survival strategy—a way of being in the world.

 

Better Late Than Never

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by Celeste Cheyney

I can’t recall all the reasons why those two grandchildren made me so happy when they were young, but I can remember a few. For one, when we were together I saw the world through their eyes and every experience was filled with excitement. When they jumped up and down like Chihuahuas as I entered the room, it was certainly good for the ego. While we were laughing at the monkeys in the Bronx Zoo and the arthritis pain mysteriously disappeared, the health benefits were clear. Whenever I brought Chinese takeout, which they devoured with gusto, I was able to help the family with almost no work at all. When they were a bit older and the boy won the second grade chess tournament or the girl pirouetted gracefully at her dance recital, it made me beam with pride.

Most important of all, though, they gave me an excuse to shop. That provided the best escape from anything that was causing anxiety. It didn’t matter if I was searching for a good deal on a crib on Amazon or wandering aimlessly around Barnes and Noble before picking up a copy of Goodnight Moon. Even buying a Spider Man t-shirt made me feel good inside. Of course finding something of educational value brought the most satisfaction. Stocking up on those Baby Einstein DVDs couldn’t guarantee the kids would turn out to be geniuses, but it might bestow some advantage one day when they applied to the Ivy League. Shopping might be a woman’s thing, but what man can resist that LEGO Technic Ocean Explorer set for his grandson? Because you’re doing all of this for them, it never seems like a waste of money or time. You’re investing in their future, which is a truly noble deed. You’ve earned the right to the instant gratification that shopping brings, without the slightest bit of guilt. That’s more than you get from buying another designer bag or custom-made shirt that you don’t need, or even a book about Spinoza.

Somehow, my son and his wife had managed to have those two children by the time they were 35. It was like some kind of a miracle, considering that most of their peers were out drinking and dancing every night. My daughter Alanna, who is eight years younger than Matt, was in no hurry either. When she was approaching 35, nothing seemed farther from her mind than becoming a parent. By then, the grandchildren were doing what was normal at their age. Not only were they too busy with homework, test prep, hockey practice, video games, and friends to want to see me for more than ten minutes, now they were capable of buying whatever they needed without any help. That, of course, left a huge gap in my life. I didn’t want it to evolve into a full-scale crisis. Wasn’t it a daughter’s duty to fill such a gap?

Alanna’s attitude shouldn’t have been a surprise. It wasn’t only that her friends were postponing parenthood as if it were some kind of a curse. It was my own fault, too. My advice to both the kids had always been to follow my example and avoid settling down too early. Stay in school as long as you can; the more degrees, the better. Find work that you feel passionate about. Most important of all, fill your life with adventure. Don’t start a family until you’ve stayed overnight in a yurt in Uzbekistan, ridden a camel across the desert near Fez, and experienced the majesty of the Taj Mahal at dawn. They had both followed my advice, and I was proud of them. However, now Alanna was almost 35 and she was still following it. Did she and her husband really need to spend their honeymoon in Thailand and Cambodia? As if that wasn’t bad enough, they were planning visits to Antarctica and Bora Bora. Maybe my advice wasn’t so good after all. I could have stressed the advantages of settling down early. You get all the hard work over with when you’re young and energetic. You can always do your traveling later. Also, didn’t they know that if anything is an adventure, it’s living with children? I should have said something about that.

This wasn’t only about me, though. Alanna and her husband seemed to adore other people’s kids. I wanted them to become part of the cycle of life. I didn’t want them to wait too long and miss out on having a family of their own. Hadn’t they heard of something called a biological time clock?

Of course, once you’ve stopped paying their bills, what your offspring do with their lives is none of your business. You never ask questions, because you might just end up offending them and then they won’t call for a month. You can’t give them advice, either, even though you’re the one who knows what’s best for them. Still, nobody said you couldn’t give it some thought.

I told myself to be patient. After all, these days people are starting families well into their forties. In educated circles, it’s becoming the norm. It should come as no surprise that having grandchildren late in life is, too. My eighty-two-year-old friend has a new grandchild, his first. This is no old geezer who shuffles along with a walker. He is seen in the park every day sprinting behind a jogging stroller, with a huge grin. Since 80 is the new 60, nobody thinks it’s the slightest bit odd. His comment about it is “Better late than never.”

I realized that Alanna and her spouse might be trying desperately to have children, without success. Maybe they’ve tried everything from acupuncture to hormone therapy, and nothing has worked. If they do IVF they could end up with triplets, or even worse. Then again, they could always adopt. That would be a mitzvah in a world where so many children are without homes. I could learn to enjoy shopping for a child who doesn’t look like me.

I had to accept the possibility that they might not want children of their own. It’s not for everyone. When you’ve seen Angkor Watt, a trip to Disney World might not seem so exciting. Children are unpredictable. They whine and cry and spill ice cream all over the couch. These days they have so much paraphernalia that there isn’t much room for anything else. Being child-free does have its advantages. My girlfriends who opted for that are quite happy with their lives. They’ve had fulfilling careers and their apartments are filled with fine paintings and priceless antiques. Even now, some of them still have svelte figures, few wrinkles, and not a single white hair.

I had to admit that it would be absurd to become a grandmother again at this age. Unless I live to almost 100, I won’t be here to see if Alanna’s children make it to the Ivy League, so I won’t know if my investments in them have actually paid off. Even if I practice Mindful Meditation and twist myself into the Cobra position every day, I probably won’t make it that far. Still, I do remember something Aunt Lill said many years ago, when she was in her seventies, “Oy, I’m like an old car. I need new parts.” These days, almost everyone of a certain age has new parts. It almost seems natural. However, if most of me is bionic, will I still be me?

Then, of course, there were global issues to consider – rising sea levels, hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, as well as income inequality and the immigrant crisis, and even the threat of nuclear war. Maybe it isn’t fair to bring a child into such an imperfect world.

Well, that was settled. I had to accept that my daughter was not likely to have children. It was probably best that way. I would have to learn to live with it. I found a designer bag on Amazon and placed my order.

About four months after she turned 35, when Alanna called to announce that she was pregnant, I almost fainted. It was tempting to say, “Well, it’s about time!” but I just blurted out, “Yes!” It‘s amazing how quickly all those negative thoughts disappeared. Once again, I would experience all the benefits that a young child brings. Most important of all, I would have somebody new to shop for. As soon as the call was over, I headed for Barnes and Noble to pick up a brand-new copy of Goodnight Moon. Better late than never. Much, much better.

 

Celeste Cheyney worked for many years with the hearing impaired, and had a memoir about a deaf colleague published by Gallaudet University Press.  I enjoy sharing my own experiences, which tend to be somewhat unusual.

 

 

 

Aunt Marge’s Fifteen Minutes

by

by Tom Ashley

Music often played in the background at Aunt Marge’s beautiful home on the shores of the Saginaw River.  She was dressed for  a party by 7 a.m. and went  through three or four clothing changes by the end of the day. Whether you knew Aunt Marge for fifteen minutes or as a regular visitor such as myself, you would discover that she was a former “Miss Saginaw,” homecoming queen and a majorette of the University of Michigan Wolverines. With an avid devotion to the media arts, she served the Michigan television community as the host of “Marge’s Forecast,” a quasi weather person cum fortuneteller. “Oh, I had many offers to go to New York , but my love for your Uncle Billy couldn’t allow me to even consider that,” she’d often tell me.

The house was called “The Birthday Cake” because of its striking turrets, latticed porches, elaborate flower boxes and a dozen gas lamps bathing the three story mansion in a perpetual glow each night.  Elegant fifty foot-silver birches encased it.

Saginaw, Michigan, is one of those cities that dropped off the radar fifty years ago. For the prior century, Saginaw was the furniture capitol of the country.  At the turn of the twentieth century, huge factories were built to supply parts to the “Big Three” – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — and vast fortunes were made..

Aunt Marge’s husband, my Uncle Billy Davis, had been  successful in highway construction and had bought “The Birthday Cake” for a song in the early 1960s when that style of house, along with Saginaw itself, was distinctly out of fashion. The home had been in a bit of disrepair upon purchase, and Uncle Billy’s fatal heart attack less than a year later did not bode well for its future. With four children under eighteen, Marge’s inheritance quickly dissipated, and repairing the place to its original glory never occurred. As the grown children departed, we thought Aunt Marge would sell the grand pile which I swear was beginning to tilt, but Aunt Marge was determined to stay. She had the house converted into three separate flats in order to make do. She retained the grand parlor floor and operated as a landlady-psychologist-traffic controller of this new venture. The top floor was occupied by a young couple with a preschool child. They were great tenants, infusing an energy, which had left when her last son headed off to college.

The middle floor was occupied by a bachelor, Carlton Smythe. He was a talented musician who could play the clarinet, guitar or piano for hours on end. He was strikingly handsome, albeit reserved. I had visited Aunt Marge many times and thrilled to hear the music coming from his flat, but had yet to meet Carlton. Then, perhaps three years later, he appeared at one of Aunt Marge’s intimate dinner parties. He was resplendent in a J. Press blazer, Hermes tie and a crested gold signet ring. For more than two hours he sat opposite me and although talking his fair share, I had never learned so little about an individual. He said he was raised in Portland, Oregon and made his living from music publishing and occasionally performing with society bands. He preferred a conversation he could pick about some obscure locale and go into an esoteric  commentary. – “Have you ever been to Helsinki in the fall when the Veeteen Festival’s in full swing and global decision makers are in town?”  I had no idea what he was talking about. In retrospect, why would you choose down and out Saginaw to live in, you…you strange man of the world?     Later, it seemed odd one afternoon when I went to fetch Aunt Marge’s mail for her that there were a half dozen newspapers for Carlton from Palm Beach to San Francisco. There were magazines such as Town and Country and Tattler, yet quizzing Aunt Marge got me nowhere. She explained that Carlton disappeared for long weekends, going ‘somewhere.’ ”Somewhere?”

Time passed and we all moved on. I was living in Los Angeles when I received the call. It was my Mom. “Are you sitting down? Watch Walter Cronkite! They’re doing a big story on Carlton Smythe, who’s no ‘Carlton Smythe’! His real name is Roger Caruso, and he’s a jewel thief who’s been operating for two decades, preying off debutante balls and other charity galas! The FBI had known about him but never had a positive resolution of who or where he was.”   Mom went on and on.  I turned on the TV and saw Carlton ahh – Roger –being led down Aunt Marge’s front steps in hand cuffs with his head hung low and no longer looking elegant and self-assured.

Next followed a young Leslie Stahl interviewing Aunt Marge, reminiscent of Gloria Swanson ready for her close-up and rambling on about how sweet ‘Carlton’ always was, but she had “always suspected something.” Really?

The old birthday cake revealed many secrets.  Jewelry was found hidden under the  floorboards. Cash, precious metals and stones were buried in the back garden. He had always played in some small society bands and more often than not, when discovering where big and important parties and weddings were being held, he would dress in a tuxedo like all the other penguins. That’s where he did most of his handiwork. Upon easy entrance, he cased the locale, noting the bejeweled women, their state of inebriation and the resting places for their handbags. More importantly, if the event was in a private residence, he’d wander around to spot rooms that weren’t in use but housed precious objets d’art. His musical cases were all fitted out with false bottoms to cart the ill-gotten gains off the premises. In those pre-security camera days, Carlton, when not playing music, could easily fit into a crowd of “gentlemen” wearing tuxedos, three-piece suits or resort-garb.

Carlton/Roger had a wife and two daughters living in San Diego, whom he had deserted 17 years earlier.  Surprisingly, he had sent money orders to them from all over the country.

Carlton readily confessed to his indiscretions, pleading his way down to an eight-year prison sentence, combined with the commitment to serve the government as a crime consultant upon release. Oh…and Aunt Marge, you ask? She certainly became an overnight celebrity. Her fifteen minutes of fame actually lasted for several months as the parade of news gatherers from around the globe poured in to put their own twists to this bizarre story. She spruced up his flat and charged $500 a night with a two-day minimum for the thrill of sleeping there.

The interviews she gave were hilarious and highly anticipated affairs. We never knew which Aunt Marge would show up: would it be the homecoming queen, the groundbreaking TV journalist or another complete surprise? But in one area where there was no wavering was her “high suspicion of Carlton.” “High suspicion”! For fifteen years?

I went to Aunt Marge’s funeral twenty years ago. Her wishes had specifically been that most of the photos on display be  of her interviews with Harry Reasoner, John Chancellor, Hugh Downs, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, … the list goes on. Of course there were photos of herself and Carlton/Roger in  her rogues gallery.  Eccentricity, highly valued by my family, was a hallmark of Aunt Marge, and although there was no need to enhance her notoriety, she thought these photos  would help her go out on a grand stage, with the Birthday Cake as backdrop.

Taking many study groups over the years at the IRP has been a growing and stimulating process.  In college, I dreaded my writing courses.  I LOVE them now.